What do you think of this setup for softies?

[nuwave59]

Hi! Here are my tank's quick description :

30g
16 inches high
1100gph in tank

Lighting : 1xT8 18000k 24'' 20 watts.
1xT8 actinic 24'' 20 watts.

I just bought a retrofit to add 2 T5 HO 22'' 24 watts tubes.

I plan to buy a 6700k 24 watt tube (purple) and a 18000k 24 watt tube (white)

I plan to put softies (colt, toadstool), mushroom and polyps in there.

What do you guys think?

 

[HollyG]

The T8 bulbs are pretty much usless... the two T5's are more than enough for soft corals and even LPS. I would do the T5 bulbs more around the 12,000K-14,000K area because a 67,000K bulb is pretty much yellow and softies don't require that low of a kelvin rating to grow. If you want the colors to come out nice stick the T5's around the 12K-14K area and use the T8 bulbs as the actinics/purples... if you like the blue color is a tank, that will look nice and the colors of zoanthids especially will come out very nicely! You can expand your coral keeping to more LPS and some "lower light" sps coral like Monti Caps and Monti Digis and birdsnests. If you just want softies and nothing else, you can keep any softy out there. You can find some very pretty colts if you take your time to look, mine is actually almost purple rather than tan or brown. Mushrooms, espesially Reds or recordias will GLOW under a more blue spectrum. Blue snowflake polyps, and there are a WIDE variety of pallys and zoanthids that look beautiful and will also glow! Eagle eyes are ones that I have and they look georgious! green star polyps too. If you are thinking going a couple LPS, Hammer corals, Torch corals and Frogspawn corals are flourescent under blue lighting and there are many different color variety you can get. trumpet coral and candy cane corals are another that look real nice that you can keep! Anyway, just throwing ideas out for ya lol

 

[mariahcolleen]

I am definitely a fan of T5 bulbs. The only problem I run into is that replacement bulbs are hard to find in my area (mostly chain pet stores with only freshwater equipment). So if you haven't yet, check the availability of replacements... Otherwise T5 bulbs are great for softies.